Umeå-Sussex Doctoral Seminar:
Diversity,Diversity,
Democratisation
and Difference:
TheoriesTheories
and
Democratisation
and Difference:
and Methodologies
Methodologies
Centre for Higher Education
and Equity Research
Perspectives on
Visual Methods
John Pryor
In the beginning
Was the word …
… or was it?
Probable agenda
•
•
•
•
Introductory presentation (with talkback)
Practical activity with task
Plenary session raising issues
Closing thoughts?
Research and the visual
• The visual nature of the world
• Making understandings of the world through images
• Listening only to words is to turn a blind eye to much
of the world.
• Breaking the hegemony of the word as a means of
understanding.
• The materiality of the world
• The creative tension between the word and the image :
questioning established patterns and breaking the
taken-for-granted.
• The ‘intrusive presence of the researcher’
Epistemology
• The visual and
the real – naive
triangulation
• Objectivity /
subjectivity
• The hidden
hand
Doubled meaning
• Internal narrative: what is?
What is in it?
• External narrative: “… the
social context that produced
the image, and the social
relations within which the
image is embedded at any
moment of viewing” (Banks
2001:11 my emphasis)
Visual data
•
•
•
•
•
•
Photographs
Videos
Drawings
Diagrams
Movements, signs
Representations of the material world
Modes and methods
1.
2.
3.
4.
Researcher-recorded data
Objects of the subjects
Active participation
Stimulated response and data
chains
1. Researcher-recorded data
• Researcher is recording a social interaction by
producing a visual representation – e.g.
filming the meeting; photographs of the class
in progress
• Fixing the complex
• Recollection in tranquility
• ‘Naturalistic’
2. The (visual) objects of the subjects
• Participants are producing visual
representations for purposes other than the
(self conscious) production of research.
• Who is the author of the image?
• Who is the audience? What are they trying to
communicate through their representation?
• Content and discourse: semiotic analysis
3. Active participation
• Participants are interpreting social situations, events,
worlds through actively producing or collecting visual
representations
• Giving a camera to participants to record their day,
video diaries, drawings, mental maps, artefact
narrative …
–
–
–
–
Phenomenological
‘Empowering’ - voice,
spontaneous/ reflective,
The researcher ‘as witness giving testimony to the lives of
others’ (Lather 2007:41)
– opens up the external narrative
4. Stimulated response and data chains
• Researcher is collaborating with participants by
asking them to interpret visual representations of
social interactions, events, people, objects
• Sorting, visual (usually photo) elicitation,
‘forensic’ interviews, stimulated video recall,
• Responses: cognitive, affective, aesthetic,
physical
• Intertextuality
• Polyvocality
Playing with photos
• How can you use these photos across the three / four
modes and methods:
– Internal content (1/2): Who are these people? What are they doing?
Why? When? Where? In whose interest?
– External narrative (3): what are the processes of selection and
composition that lie behind the photos? What were their intentions?
– Response (4): How could you use these photos for gaining a response
with their authors, subjects or others?
• How would it be different, if using other media (e.g.
video)
• What methodological issues does the discussion
provoke?
Stimulated video recall
• Video-based observation of events and activities
provides visual data which may be analysed directly.
• After event view with participants generates
interview data focusing on:
–
–
–
–
–
recall of practices
thought processes
interpretation of practices
status of practices compared with a norm
resonance with other events.
Ethics and Visual data
• Anonymity
• Sensitivity with
participants
• Sensitivity with ethics committees
• Re-use – requires forethought and
persistence
• Public data?
Some other issues with visual data
• Allowing for genre and aesthetics
(often not done with other means)
• ‘Reactivity’
• Storage and archiving
Reporting with visual data
• Directness
• Academic restrictions
(theses, journals)
• Different strokes …
‘impact’